Born near the dawn of the 21st century, the millennials are perhaps the very first generation to embrace technology in all aspects of life. A mobile-first generation, their lives revolve around technology. They are bombarded by digital ads all the time. They know what works for them and what does not.
More importantly, they are informed consumers capable of taking decisions. In fact, according to the Green Hat’s ‘B2B Marketing Outlook 2017’, around half of all B2B decision makers are between 18-34 years old. This year, millennial buyers can actually account for 75% of the decision making process.
No wonder, legacy marketers are trying hard to break free from the shackles of traditional marketing and employ innovative marketing strategies to attract the millennials.
Why do you Need to Market to the Millennials?
Millennials form an integral sector of any market. They have the money and they like spending it on things they like. According to the Cone Communications Social Impact Study, more than $1 billion in U.S. consumer spending belongs to this demographic.
This generation is used to instant-gratification and it needs this on a regular basis. They are highly-demanding and well-informed when it comes to taking purchase decisions, so you cannot fake your way around them.
Moreover, they are active on social media websites, which makes them an excellent choice for testimonials. If they like your product, chances are they will let their friends, family and colleagues know about it.
84% of millennials admit they are heavily influenced by what other people buy and user-generated content that pops up on websites help them take a purchase decision.
All this has given them a greater ability to tune-out ineffective marketing and ads and focus on what they want.
So, your approach has to be very sound and particular if you want to attract the attention of this generation.
A New Generation in Marketing
In order to market products and services to this generation, a new era has emerged in marketing. Relying solely on traditional marketing strategies is a thing of yesterday.
Now it’s all about sending the right message across the right audience. It’s about customizing and personalizing customer experience to promote a better brand value.
New-age marketing tools like marketing automation helps you attract their attention and nurture it to become lifelong customers.
Let’s consider email. Email marketing might be old when it comes to digital marketing but it is still pretty relevant and reliable. Millennials like a social connection and email is a great way to keep in touch.
With marketing automation, you can personalize every email, track open rates, and measure the success rate of your email campaigns.
You can track their activities, get to know what they like and dislike and create relevant content that will appeal to them.
Having marketing automation by your side lets you take advantage of its dynamic content module that helps you generate relevant content for every user on your website.
You can control all your social media accounts from one dashboard and conduct social media campaigns to reach out to millennials.
A demographic that relies heavily on mobile, they are always online and have their social media accounts handy. This does come with a plethora of advantages as it lets you tune in to see what leads and customers are saying about you.
You receive instant feedback, and you can choose to act on them and make things better.
Millennials love a brand who is available 24/7 to hear their complaints and suggestions. Not only does it help you to improve your product and services but it also helps create happy customers.
Millennials engage with brands on multiple platforms and multiple devices, probably simultaneously. Tracking, personalizing and serving relevant communication to millennials is challenging manually but fairly easy with a robust marketing automation system.
Millennials are tech-savvy, and you need to be as well. They are predictable as well, you just need to study them carefully. If you concentrate on creating a better customer experience, you will surely be able to rope in more millennials as leads and qualify them to close more deals.